


a song inside him, and feathers

by thehandsingsweapon



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, M/M, two idiots pining, victor nikiforov is not even a real person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 04:48:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17481485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsingsweapon/pseuds/thehandsingsweapon
Summary: A stranger falls from the sky, and destroys Empress Hiroko's favorite primroses.“Do you really expect us to believe you were flying?” asks one of the guards. But Yuuri senses as well as the stranger does that his guards are outmatched in this battle of wits and finds himself fighting a wry smile, mirrored in the intruder’s wan features the moment their eyes meet. Because of this, he misses the warning Minako whispers to his mother:he will bring you heartbreak. He will take something from you that you will never get back.He also misses the way his mother studies him, her precious, baby boy: the way she sees the corner of his lips curl, and his irises warm; the way she understands better than he ever could what has already been lost.





	a song inside him, and feathers

**Author's Note:**

> I was fortunate enough to get to collab with a wonderful artist for this zine! You can see Terri's beautiful art [here.](https://twitter.com/itsterrimorgan/status/1083378177626509312)

It begins on the day a stranger falls from the sky, and destroys Empress Hiroko’s favorite primroses.

Nishigori Takeshi has just moved into second place in the afternoon’s archery contest, narrowly edging out Minami Kenjirou. His subsequent jubilance is not, strictly-speaking, polite, but decorum has never been one of Takeshi’s strong suits. Yuuri is not supposed to play favorites, so he hides his smile as Kenjirou tries — and immediately fails — not to pout. Around Yuuri’s family, the court is forever playing a complicated, many-sided game of go, and amidst the shifting allegiances of the daimyo and their samurai, the imperial household must always keep the game in balance. 

Undeterred, Kenjirou promises that Yuuri will surpass them both. “Yuuri-shinnō will beat you,” he swears, his expression wavering between petulance over his loss and fervent admiration for his prince. “He’s the best archer!” His loyalty, though admirable, is also terrifying: Yuuri thinks he’s only passable with the bow. He knows how many targets he misses when he practices alone at night. 

“Beat _that_ shot?” Takeshi scoffs. “Unlikely.” Their friendships sit on opposite ends of a long spectrum: Kenjirou constantly tries to elevate Yuuri to the pedestal of godhood, and Takeshi reminds him daily that he’s still just a mere mortal. For now, Yuuri ignores them both in favor of attempting to control his own nerves as he notches an arrow. His heartbeat pounds, asynchronous and dull, in his ears as he works to steady his breath, and studies the way the slight summer breeze will no doubt bend his shot. 

_Twang._ The arrow sails. The entire court holds its breath for a fraction of a second, and then: _thunk._ Behind Yuuri, both the eruption of a cheer from Kenjirou, as well as the good-natured groaning of Takeshi, indicate that he’s staved off public failure for another day. Anxiety loosens its iron grip around his chest. “I told you so,” Kenjirou crows. He proceeds to insist that Yuuri could shoot an arrow so far that none of them could find it, a bet Takeshi seizes on with glee. Because Yuuri is afraid of letting any of them down, he notches a second arrow, and aims much, much higher before he lets it loose. This time, the black streak of it is lost in the unbearable brightness of the sun.

Behind them, Okukawa Minako, who reads the tea leaves and consults the astrological charts, steps out onto the porch just in time for a sharp gust of wind. The hawk-eyed fortune teller waves off both Kenjirou and Takeshi from their search for the arrow. “It is already lost,” she warns, preparing their tea. “Come and sit.” 

The respite promised by the shade of the pavilion and the subtle flavor of Minako’s barley tea is suddenly shattered by a strange, indiscriminate swearing, followed swiftly by a sickening, bone-crunching thud. Warning gongs clang immediately, sending armed guards pouring out from their stations throughout the palace grounds. It is their sworn duty to keep Yuuri and his family safe, but the idea of letting other men put themselves at risk for his own sake rankles, and so Yuuri quickly reaches for his bow. 

“I’ll come with you to the gardens,” he tells the nearest guard, over protests that he ought to stay put, that he’s safer where he is. They’re right, of course, but Yuuri is not the sort to take orders. Together, they rush into his mother’s rose garden, not far from the pavilion, where there is a figure collapsed amidst the rose bushes, struggling to get to his feet without garnering further scratches from the thorns. Yuuri draws and promptly forgets to notch his arrow as the stranger finally rises and turns to look at them. He stands with the regal bearing of a prince, even with leaves and rose petals stuck in the tangles of his hair, in spite of his muddied, torn-up robes. He is easily the most striking thing Yuuri has ever seen, with hair the color of starlight, and sea-bright eyes. Yuuri does not get to wonder about him for long; the guards seize him, one of them dipping a blade underneath the strong, straight line of the man’s chin. They remind him quickly that to enter the palace grounds without an invitation from the Emperor is asking for death.

“I don’t think I was _trying_ to get here,” mutters the strange man. He raises his elegant hands in surrender, attempting to mask his own pain, but Yuuri sees his wince, and notices the splotch of fresh blood slowly growing larger just below the collar of his haori. “I crashed, _obviously_.” Now that they stand looking at each other, Yuuri can’t help but think of the otherworldly spirits in Minako-dono’s stories, and nearly shivers. In all of those old stories, events as they unfurl have a way of settling fates in an irreversible way. Not far away, his mother must be thinking something similar; Yuuri hears her asking for Lady Okukawa under her breath. 

“Do you really expect us to believe you were _flying_?” snaps the nearest guard. 

“The primroses certainly believe it,” the man retorts. Yuuri senses as well as the stranger does that his guards are outmatched in this battle of wits and finds himself fighting a wry smile, mirrored in the intruder’s wan features the moment their eyes meet. Because of this, he misses the warning Minako whispers to his mother: _he will bring you heartbreak. He will take something from you that you will never get back._ He also misses the way his mother studies him, her precious, baby boy: the way she sees the corner of his lips curl, and his irises warm; the way she understands better than he ever could what has already been lost.

“Take him to the court physician and have those injuries treated,” Yuuri directs, ignoring a murmur of protest about the possible danger this path poses. His father’s house is known, above all else, for its hospitality to guests, a reputation Yuuri is determined to preserve even as he takes a wakizashi off of one of the guards and steps closer. He nudges the man’s haori off of his shoulder with the sheath of the sword to have a look at the wound. It is not bludgeoned, the way the man’s arm is from his fall, but pierced, as though by a dart. When their eyes meet, the stranger does not look away, as he ought, but holds Yuuri’s gaze like an equal. Yuuri has seen sapphires in the royal treasury that are less faceted, less blue. “You may station several guards with him,” he adds. “Perhaps his memory will fare better when more of his blood is inside of his body.”

Overhead, the wind picks up, gusting strongly out of the west. It promises rain.

\- - -

The stranger’s name, Yuuri learns later, is Victor. It is one of the only things he can concretely remember about himself. For someone essentially held prisoner, he is remarkably charming; Yuuri comes to visit more than once, and always catches himself smiling as he leaves. He tells himself it is because he feels bad that Victor is kept captive, and not because he is in any way enchanted, but as he keeps inviting Victor to come and sit with the small court, the excuse of it becomes less and less convincing. 

Yuuri sees him as he’s accompanied by two guards through the steady rain that blankets the complex. No one has done Victor the courtesy of fetching him an umbrella, though he seems utterly unconcerned by the slight. To the contrary, he throws his head back in the rain, and lets water droplets cover his face, lingering outside in the downpour until his clothes are soaked through. There are peacocks scattered across the grounds, retreating to take shelter, and Victor makes a show of mimicking their movements as he approaches the porch. He has all of the bird’s grace and beauty, and its regal bearing, too, even when he does something as simple as twisting rainwater out of his high platinum ponytail. When those brilliant, mirthful eyes catch his own, Yuuri can’t help but smile. “You are in good spirits today, Victor-san.”

Victor flashes a bright, heart-shaped grin and tilts his head down towards his injured arm, still bruised from the fall. Yuuri knows the wound is already tended, having seen to it once himself. “My arm is healing nicely,” Victor explains, “and I have determined that I am the sort of person who likes to dance. It will be well enough again soon for it, I think.” 

“He flies _and_ he dances?” It’s the sort of subtle thing Yuuri might say to bait Takeshi, but Victor doesn’t quite rise to the occasion; instead his smile settles into something smaller as he looks out the window, taking a deep breath of biting breeze and crisp petrichor. _What is it?_ Yuuri suddenly wants to  ask, though he does not know how to finish the question, torn between wondering what it is Victor’s thinking, and whether or not he said something wrong.

“He _crashes_ and he dances,” Victor corrects gently. This time he does not smile; he looks distant, the way he always does, whenever anyone alludes to his unusual arrival. Sometimes it feels as though they are playing a game of chess. By the time the outcome arrives, the ending will have long-since been rendered inevitable, though Yuuri will have somehow missed every moment that gave the game away. Yet Victor’s mood is as changeable as the wind, and soon he asks: “When was the last time you took a walk in a rainstorm?”

It is a ridiculous suggestion. Yet nobody makes ridiculous suggestions around Yuuri anymore, and so he accepts the invitation. They cannot truly be left alone: it is Yuuri, Victor, and Yuuri’s three guards, who follow at a distance from the shelter of their umbrellas. Along the way, Victor stops and performs another dance; this one is silly, and makes Yuuri throw his head back to laugh. They return soaking wet, still laughing like they are old friends. “I always wanted to learn how to dance,” Yuuri confesses quietly. It is impossible, of course: he will someday be the Emperor, and to do what Victor does would be insensible at his rank.

Victor studies him. His eyes are kind, and more than that, Yuuri knows intuitively that they are safe. “You would be good at it,” he says, with a certainty that takes Yuuri by surprise. “I could teach you.” 

Yuuri decides then and there that he will let him, in the still and quiet of the night time, the closest thing to a secret that either of them will ever share. He is clumsy at first, but earnest, and Victor declares him a natural even as he adjusts Yuuri’s posture, or corrects his footwork. “The way you move is very …”

“Very what?”

“Enchanting,” Victor replies softly. In these secret, midnight lessons, they are only ever themselves. “Like you’re the one making the music.” 

A week passes this way, but the storms do not. Victor stations himself inside, bent over a koto, trying to distract everyone from the ominous rumble of thunder and the oppressive percussion of hail. He is uncommonly talented, and there is witchcraft in his hands as they move over the strings. Hunched over the instrument, his ill-fitting haori exposes far too much of his neck, which is practically indecent, and yet somehow proves Yuuri’s suspicions that there is no part of Victor that isn’t beautiful. He thinks he would like to touch the subtle knot of bone at Victor’s nape, or let down his hair, to see if it is as silky as it looks, all things that Yuuri should not be wishing for at all. _But what,_ he wonders, every time Victor smiles at him, _was ever the harm in a wish?_

\- - -

The hail destroys the sake on display for the ancestors at Ginkaku-ji, and that’s when Emperor Toshiya decides he’s finally had enough. He interrupts a game of shogi which Yuuri is spectacularly losing against the genius son of a high-ranking Korean diplomat, sparing Yuuri from an imminent defeat better attributed to Victor’s proximity than to the prodigy of Lee Seung-gil. 

“We have received reports from the provinces,” Toshiya explains, expression unusually grave. “These storms are everywhere. If the bad weather continues for too much longer, many lords fear their farmers will lose their crops.” If the upcoming season proves to be one of famine, they all know that it will be the peasants, and not the lords, who suffer. “In this matter there is little the daimyo can do. They cannot hope to command the skies.” 

“Can you?” Victor asks. The question makes Minako-dono offer him her iciest stare, but it only partially chastises him. “Toshiya-tennō,” Victor amends. “Forgive me, if I’ve been too impetuous…” 

“I do not pretend that my authority stretches beyond the earth which I am given.” Toshiya brushes the matter of Victor’s impulsiveness aside with grace. Yuuri’s father is kind, kinder than some might wish a ruler to be, but it has never made him a fool. “You take a keen interest, for a man who crashed into my wife’s garden from the sky the afternoon before all of this weather set in.” 

Though he pretends otherwise, Yuuri knows the things that are said about Victor behind his back. Some say he is one of the kami; others insist he is a demon. Yuuri always bristles at any suggestion that Victor bodes ill, or will bring them misfortune, and he is about to speak in Victor’s defense until Victor startles him by sweeping a thumb over his knuckles. It forces Yuuri to release what has become a bone-white grip on the fabric of his hakama. Victor’s touch does not linger; he bows his head, hiding his gaze behind a curtain of starshine hair. “I have strange dreams,” he admits, “and I do not remember them well. Nor do I properly remember myself, before I came here. Still, it is difficult to imagine that I might be important enough to be the source of all this strife—”

Yuuri’s had enough of simply listening. He clears his throat. “Minako-dono,” he murmurs, carefully redirecting the conversation, which is easier than examining his own conflicting feelings. Yuuri thinks that Victor cannot possibly be unimportant, that he is singular in all of the universe, and yet he wishes, very deeply, for Victor’s arrival and the weather to be two wholly unconnected phenomena, unrelated, trivial. “You have consulted the sages, no doubt. What have you discerned?”

“As to the cause, I cannot say for sure,” she admits. “But there are old gods — Raijin and Fujin — who are the keepers of wind and thunder, and perhaps we may appeal to them that the storms may cease.” Ever the man of action, Takeshi is swift to ask her how such a thing might be done, and so Minako tells them of an ancient temple, built into the mouth of a long-silent volcano, on an island south of Edo. “It is a place where Raijin may beat on his drums until the mountains shake and tremble, and Fujin can stir up the winds in the bowl of the mountain, with no mortal ever the wiser for it.” But this makes Yuuri’s mother object, worried about the possibility of traveling by sea in such horrible storms. 

To Yuuri’s surprise, it is the diplomat’s son, Lee Seung-gil, who offers a way forward. “If I may, your majesties… On my journey here, I met a Siamese merchant, who trades out of Nagasaki. I beat him in a game of chess, and won the right to the secret of his success: his ship, he says, has been blessed by the spirits and can travel safely against any current, and through any storm.”

“Then he will carry our offering to the island,” Toshiya declares, and Yuuri interjects:

“Father,” he says, his eyes ablaze, “let me.”

\- - -

Lee Seung-gil reluctantly agrees to lead them to Nagasaki; Yuuri brings Nishigori, Minami and, of course, Victor. He has been given a lacquered box of offerings for the journey: three things that Mari-naishinnō, Hiroko-kōgō, and Toshiya-tennō all treasure, and which they hope will bring him good fortune. One of them is his mother’s favorite jade comb, a wedding gift from his father, which Yuuri regularly takes out of the box simply to feel closer to home. Every night, Victor uses it to comb through Yuuri’s hair, carefully picking out the tangles more gently than Yuuri could ever expect. It is an intimate, soft gesture, which always leaves Yuuri feeling warm, and cared for, and — strangely enough — brave. 

Seung-gil, for his part, seems to hope that the merchant will not be at the port. “If we are lucky, we’ll be able to wait out the rainstorm there until the weather returns to normal of its own volition,” he grumbles. He does not believe in the blessing of Chulanont’s ship, nor the ancient spirits they are off to appease, nor the divine right Yuuri has invoked on his quest. So when Seung-gil curses under his breath as they approach the city, Yuuri is not sure what to expect. 

“You’re in luck, Yuuri-shinnō,” Seung-gil mutters. He’s much too polite to say _in bad luck_ , but Yuuri can tell he’s thinking it. “Chulanont’s here.”

Yuuri remembers the conversation he had with Victor just the night before. _Do you believe in any of this?_ he’d wanted to know. _The old gods, the idea that we could change their minds, somehow, like we’re the ones in the legends now…?_ Victor had paused in the doorway to his quarters for the night, regarding Yuuri with a serene, clear gaze: _I’m not sure,_ he’d admitted, _but I do believe in you._ It had been enough, then, to convince Yuuri that he might prove capable after all, and he considers it every time he looks at Victor. There had been no lie in his eyes then, and there is none now. _I believe in you_ , Victor had said.

As for Yuuri? He believes in Victor.

Phichit Chulanont proves almost intolerably optimistic about their chances as he’s read into their quest, evidently unconcerned that every worst-case scenario ends in shipwreck or drowning. “It’s only the worst weather I’ve ever seen,” he chirps, “so what could possibly go wrong?” 

Then he proceeds to surprise everyone by leading them to a local temple dedicated to Susano-o, the god of the sea. 

“I’d never have expected a Siamese trader to revere any of the kami,” Takeshi snorts, looking up at the impozing bronze statue outside the temple gates.

“I guess neither Susano-o or I care much about each other, you’re right,” Phichit admits, staring all the way up Susano-o’s imposing figure before looking out at the choppy sea, “but I’m being tasked with ferrying his great-great-great-great grand-nephew or whatever across the ocean you say he has dominion over, so it can’t hurt. Besides, we sailors are a superstitious breed.”

Susano-o, Yuuri knows, is proud and treacherous, and it is that more than anything else that makes Yuuri hesitate at the base of the statue. If it truly is the gods who are causing the rain to continue to fall, then they cannot afford to accidentally offend. He opens up the lacquered chest, then removes Mari-naishinnō’s gift, an ornate pipe with a matching tobacco case, and places it gently between Susano-o’s stomping feet. “Let’s go.” Another bout of thunder crashes ominously overhead; the sooner they set sail the better. Only when they arrive back at the gates does Yuuri realize Victor hasn’t come with them, and he looks back to see him standing at the base of the statue, as though holding a conversation with it. 

Something twists in Yuuri’s chest. Surely Victor does not commune with the gods. “Victor? Are you coming?”

Victor turns, and flashes a small smile which Yuuri can tell, even at this distance, does not reach his eyes. Before they finally leave, Yuuri casts one last glance back at the statue. He’s convinced, for a moment, that he sees the pipe in the god’s free hand, and with it, the curl of smoke. When he blinks, though, Susano-o is as still and imposing as ever. 

They are all glad to shelter back aboard Phichit’s ship, the _Unknown Lands_ , a pretty thing with broad, crimson sails, though Takeshi struggles once they depart: Yuuri’s bravest, strongest man spends most of his time at the rails in the rain, overtaken by sea-sicknesses. Only Victor seems as comfortable on the ship as Phichit is; he flits about it with ease and grace, like some hollow-boned creature, made for tempests like this one. Phichit’s promises of blessing hold true; in spite of the howling wind and raging storm, their voyage is eerily smooth. 

At night, Victor teaches Yuuri more of his dances while the others hide from the rain together in the hold, all equals in the crew’s bunks. There, long after all his friends have gone to sleep, Yuuri lies awake. He has wanted, for all of his life, to be let out of the palace’s gilded cage, and now here he is, on a quest which may still prove futile. 

“Can’t sleep?” Victor asks, quietly, and when Yuuri shakes his head, Victor scoots their pallets closer, reaches for Yuuri’s hands, and hums softly under his breath. The melody of it is gorgeous and a little forlorn; lingering well into Yuuri’s dreams. When he wakes, he is still fixed in Victor’s gaze, their fingers laced together. 

The gesture is so soft and sacred that it burns Yuuri to let go. He does so anyway; the island calls. 

\- - -

“He’s cute, your foreigner,” Phichit teases. Behind him, Kenjirou Minami lets out an exasperated sigh, no doubt meant to be a reminder that Phichit ought to address Yuuri in a less familiar manner, though it has no effect whatsoever: jokes like this seem to be Phichit’s way of lighting little candles in the dark of the sickly sky, hoping that they will withstand the furious, howling winds. They’ve just come ashore, soaking wet from rain and seawater, and the hardest part of the task remains: making a climb up the mountain to see if the legends are true, and then determining whether or not the old gods will barter. Perhaps this is why the merchant smiles and teases, or perhaps it is because Victor has gone ahead of them to scout a path up the hill, and Phichit has once again caught Yuuri admiring him as he slips through the dark trees with impossible grace.

Now, more than ever, a small voice tells Yuuri that Victor is too lovely to be real, to be simply human. He tries to ignore it, hesitating at the border between narrow, rocky beach and treeline. “...He isn’t,” he replies belatedly, as though he’s been chewing through the words. He can already imagine Phichit’s follow-up question — _Isn’t what?_ — so Yuuri preemptively answers as he moves ahead to catch up on the rough trail Victor’s making through the mud and sludge of the forest. “He belongs to no one,” he mumbles as he passes. _He isn’t mine._

_He could belong to you, though,_ whisper Yuuri’s treacherous thoughts, the same ones that inspire him to race along the precarious incline just to spend a little more time at Victor’s side. At the peak of the mountain, they’re exposed to the wide sweep of the caldera, overlooking a single, improbable building carved into the crater’s edge. There, bright orange gates stand out in sharp relief, and though Yuuri supposes he ought to be glad to see them, he shudders with dread. This building validates all of Minako-dono’s old myths, which just begs the question: _what else might be true?_

Together they all descend into the temple’s exterior courtyard, lightly flooded with rain, and look upon the large black doors set directly into the impassive stone of the caldera’s edge. The handles are impossibly large and high, and while Seung-gil and Takeshi debate how they might succeed in opening them, Victor wanders to a nearby bell, oxidized with the passage of time. A silk rope dangles from its center, and Victor places it in Yuuri’s hands, leaving his fingers curled around Yuuri’s knuckles. “It ought to be you,” he says, and Yuuri closes his eyes. 

In the temples at home, these bells are sometimes used for wishes, and so he makes one: _Don’t ask me to give him up,_ he pleads, with whatever it is that listens in these strange, supernatural places. _I am not sure I can do it._ Then he rings the bell, which is startlingly clear, commanding a brief silence from the maelstrom raging overhead. For a moment it seems nothing will happen. Then the two doors yawn open, and the view behind them proves incredible: instead of a cavern, an open avenue leads the way to one singular, impressive hall. Beyond the doors, the sky above the temple building is perfectly clear, and dusky as twilight, with a sliver of the sun left on the horizon and the moon already hung in the sky. The stars overhead twinkle brighter and closer than Yuuri’s ever seen. 

“ _Impossible,_ ” he hears Seung-gil whisper. 

“Improbable,” corrects Victor. He takes Yuuri’s hand and steps over the threshold. _Come._

They walk down the long promenade together. Thousands of fireflies twinkle in and out of existence, and exquisite kintsugi vases hover at various heights in midair, pouring what seems to be a never-ending supply of sake into two channels that run forward to the temple hall. There, two bronze figures dominate, each of them captured in the middle of a strange, savage dance. 

_Strange_ , booms a new voice in Yuuri’s thoughts as he stares up at the two imposing statues. He’s inclined to agree; every time he blinks he catches a flicker of movement, as though the drums around one of the figures were moving after all, crashing in time with the storm they’ve left behind, beyond the black doors. _My brother and I have not had guests here for some time and now we’ve had them twice._

“Twice?” Yuuri echoes. A swift glance around at the others tells him they’re all hearing the same thing, though only Victor seems unsurprised. 

_Have you come as they came, to ask us a favor, little Princeling?_ The voice inquires. Another, heartier one booms with laughter: **_You carry a wish and gifts, and they are at cross-purposes. Whichever shall it be?_**

“Why does it have to be one thing or the other?” Victor wonders, tapping a finger on his mouth, expression troubled and pensive. 

“I’ve come to ask you to stop the storms,” Yuuri says. He is the Crown Prince of Japan; what _he_ wants will always come in second place. 

_Hm. We were asked to start the storms, once._

“By who?” Victor asks. Behind them both, Kenjirou, Takeshi, Seung-gil and Phichit are all silent observers, exchanging looks and measuring the distance back to the door. It is only Victor who takes an equal share in the conversation, as though somehow meant to do so.

**_You really do not know,_** booms the voice Yuuri has already begun to associate with Raijin. It is rich with bemusement. **_Precious, lost little bird._** The  thunder-god’s brother whistles and wheedles around the facts: _What will you give us, if we do what you ask?_

Yuuri is quiet for a moment, and then he responds: “I am a son of Amaterasu-ōmikami. Does that mean nothing, in this place?”

Raijin grows indignant. **_It means I have chosen to appear before you as I am now, and not as fury and power and lightning itself. There is only one of your party who can comprehend us without terror and trembling, Princeling, and it is not you._**

Victor’s eyes widen in surprise, bright and impossibly blue, and Yuuri steels himself against this revelation. Victor, it seems, is capable of standing in front of the divine, and seeing them as they truly are, but Yuuri does not have the luxury of thinking about it now, not when he has come so far to try to help the people his father rules. “I will give you my mother’s jade comb,” he tells the vibrating statue of Fujin, “which is a treasure passed down for several generations...”

_And what will I do with it?_

“Untangle the winds, I daresay,” Victor retorts, but the comment lacks some of his usual bite; he has masked himself, somewhat unsuccessfully: behind his neutral expression Yuuri can detect a hint of turmoil churning.

“For your brother I have my father’s best sake,” Yuuri adds, for Raijin’s benefit. “So that from both the Emperor and the Empress you have what they think is best of our house.”

**_…The gifts are sufficient,_** declares Raijin, with one last answering rumble. _Leave the gates open when you depart,_ Fujin adds, _so that I may return the winds here, to the ends of the earth._ Yuuri is not accustomed to dismissals, but the traveling party is, and it falls to Nishigori to lay a heavy hand on his shoulder, reminding Yuuri that they’ve accomplished what they set out to do. Why, then, does he still feel like a failure?

\- - -

The return trip to Nagasaki is all-too-easy; the seas are calm, and during the daytime, the skies are an unrelenting, optimistic blue. At night, Yuuri spends longer than he should above deck, trying to seek answers from far away stars. “Still can’t sleep?” Victor asks. Yuuri doesn’t answer him; he simply bows his head, and studies the elegant prow of Phichit’s ship as it slices through the waves. “Me either,” Victor admits. “I…”

“I don’t care what you are,” Yuuri interrupts. He’s been thinking about this ever since they left the island. “We did what we set out to do. If you want to stay as you are—” _if you want to stay close to me_ “—then nothing should stop you.”

“Yuuri,” Victor whispers, his gaze unbearably fond. He steps closer, brushing a hand over Yuuri’s cheek, then traces the curve of his mouth. Yuuri’s convinced his own treacherous heart will betray him, that Victor will hear the way it’s bound to thunder out of his chest, and his eyelashes flutter in anticipation of a kiss that never comes. Instead Takeshi coughs politely in the background, and tells them both that Phichit thinks they’ll arrive by morning. He gives an admonition to rest that Yuuri barely hears; his eyes are open again, and he’s lost in the galaxy of Victor’s gaze. 

In Nagasaki, they secure an inn, one day’s respite before the trip back to the capital. After their meal there, Yuuri is only a little surprised to find Victor lingering in the hallway that leads to the rooms he’s been given by theinnkeeper, a man all-too-ready to curry favor with the Emperor’s son. Their eyes meet; the world is briefly still and singular. Then Yuuri slides back the door to his room, ignoring the tremble that’s overtaken his fingers, and lets Victor in.

Later, in the dark, he will ask: _have you done this before?_ Victor says that he cannot imagine that he ever wanted to, before Yuuri, and though neither of them have any way of knowing if it’s the truth, Yuuri thinks that it must be so. _Me either,_ he says, and he kisses Victor again.

It is still dark when Yuuri wakes, still cradled against Victor’s chest, listening to the pitter-patter of his heartbeat and tracing the small pock-mark that still mars the skin there. It seems to be the one thing that helps him also remember Victor’s imperfections, the little flaws which Yuuri likes and which make him a real person, and not just someone beautiful and unattainable. In the pre-morning quiet, Yuuri wrestles with the weight of the past few days. The implications of the kami are unforgettable: though Yuuri may be a descendant of the sun goddess, he’s still only human. Victor, they have hinted with their ominous, preternatural voices, is something else, which Yuuri is not sure he wants to believe. Not now, not when he’s tasted Victor’s lips, felt the caress of his hands, listened for the breathless song of his praise. It feels unreal, strangely precious, and Yuuri realizes with a start that it is because he is unaccustomed to his own happiness. He has spent too much time imagining a loveless future, married to a convenient spouse, brokering political arrangements — forever trapped by his obligations to the throne, never imagining that there might be something he could hold onto just for himself. Except now he has lain with Victor and an alternate history stretches before him, working its way through his bloodstream, changing him: _what if you choose differently. What if you find just the one thing you want to hold onto—_

Victor wakes, turning to press sleepy kisses to Yuuri’s throat, his jaw, and then the corner of his mouth. “What are you thinking about?” 

“You,” says Yuuri. _How to hold on to you,_ he does not say. Instead he adds: “Do you wish you could remember what it was you were before?”

Victor’s answer comes much too slow. “...I don’t think it matters,” he says. “But there’s something else—” 

They’re interrupted by a knock at the door — it’s Kenjirou, warning of another problem. Victor swears he can wait, so Yuuri rises, reluctant, and dresses, though a quick glance out the window tells him what he needs to know: the golden light of the sun is hidden behind a perfect, black circle, making the sky dim and desaturated and very nearly dark. 

_Another curse?_ Takeshi posits. _So it would seem,_ confirms Seung-gil. For this, Yuuri does not need Minako to consult her tea leaves or to divine from the stars. Ever since childhood, he’s heard the ancient stories of how Amaterasu hid herself in her rock cave and had to be coaxed out by the other gods; he knows precisely where the shrine is that overlooks the gorge she once retreated to. “Phichit,” Yuuri murmurs, steeling himself against his own private fears, “...it seems we’re in need of your assistance one last time.”

“Prince Yuuri,” replies Phichit, both smiling and serious, “I am ever in your service.” 

The seas are still again as the _Unknown Lands_ navigates around the bay. They head due east, even as the sun and moon circle the world in impossible, eerie sync. Yuuri has never seen the ocean as dusky as this, and it offers him no peace. He’s not the only one; Victor grows more and more restless, frequently leaving the hold to pace the upper deck of the ship. They’re standing together at the prow as Phichit points out the coast appearing up ahead. From there, the rest of the journey can only proceed over land, by foot. 

“I’ve been having strange dreams,” Victor admits, as they navigate between rice fields and skirt tiny villages in the dim light. He has a pensive, worried mien that Yuuri does not like; he has not had enough time to collect Victor’s smiles, or to enjoy his joy. “I think I…” 

Yuuri reaches to reassure him. Perhaps the only thing more frightening than the idea that Victor isn’t, in fact, human, is the idea that Yuuri might ever do or say something to make Victor hide some part of himself. Already, Yuuri is certain that no matter what happens, that is not something he wants: he wants all of Victor, as whoever or whatever he is. 

“...Have you ever heard of the sky wardens?” Victor asks. Yuuri shakes his head. “Perhaps I dreamed them up,” he adds, with a bitter chuckle. “These past few nights, I’ve seen their cities: great pagodas in the heavens, built up into the clouds. And the people who live there are bird-spirits who safeguard the heavens for the kami. I’ve seen them — there is a chattering, friendly rosefinch, and a dramatic kingfisher. There’s an angry little starling who I think might be the youngest of them all. And at opposite ends of their city live two of their oldest and wisest spirits: a hawk-eyed woman and a man with a booming voice, big and broad as a sea eagle. When I look at them, they’re like… it’s like being back at that temple, or speaking to Susano-o.”

“You spoke to Susano-o?” Yuuri has suspected as much for a while now, and ignores the sting of the confirmation.

“...Just briefly.” Victor kicks at pebbles as he walks. “He wanted to know what I was doing so far from home, which I thought was very strange. I told him I didn’t remember where home was, and when he asked if I’d want him to take me there, I told him that what I wanted was to make sure you were safe. I thought I was… imagining things, maybe. It seemed surreal. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

Yuuri considers that, quiet. Not for the first time, he wonders if there’s something important he’s keeping Victor from; he’d be doubly selfish, if so, indulging his own desires and hoarding Victor all to himself. “...What are they like, to you?”

“It’s a little like looking at more than one thing at the same time. I see the statue, and a man, and the way the waves curl when the tides come in. The wardens are like that: like there is an avatar of a person, and a bird spirit, all rolled into one.”

Yuuri asks the question he’s most afraid of. “Do you think you’re one of them?” 

“Maybe,” Victor confesses, after a very long pause. He no longer smiles when he speaks. “But I don’t know what it means, if I am.” They walk a while further in silence, and Yuuri feels Victor’s hand twitch in his own. “Whatever is happening, though, to make all of your people go through this,” he says, as though he’s made a decision, “I think it’s gone on more than long enough.”

They finally arrive at the river, and make their way down to the gorge which holds Amaterasu’s sacred cave. Here, everything is cool and dark, and Yuuri hesitates, standing on the rocky slope at the mouth of the cave. “Amaterasu-ōmikami,” he asks, into the deep, black silence there. “Why are you hiding your light for a second time?”

For a long moment, it seems as though there will be no response; perhaps she is not here after all. Then Yuuri senses a voice, beautiful as windchimes, and radiant as the dawn. _My child. I have been asked to do so._ In the darkness in front of him, a story begins to unfold, narrated by gathering fireflies that assemble into figurines of light which underscore her tale. _The crane warden has gone missing. At first the eagle-spirit and the hawk-spirit fought, convinced that each had hidden him for themselves. They stirred up trouble with Raijin and Fujin, the troublesome brothers they see the most often in their travels through the skies. But it was the starling who came to me. Among the sky wardens there is no one who understands beauty like the crane-spirit, and the starling wanted to learn from him and feels betrayed by his disappearance._

“Will you come back out if he returns?” Victor asks. “If he goes back to them, does all of this stop?”

“Victor,” Yuuri whispers. What the goddess says next forms the notes of the saddest song, and dashes Yuuri’s hopes: _You are almost like him, you know. The Crane Prince. But I think if you were ever him, you are not now. You are fashioned into something smaller. They would not like it._

“But if I was him. If I proved to you that I was. And I went back to the heavens. Would the kingdom of men have peace, then?”

_Peace is for the men themselves to decide, as it always has been,_ says the voice of bells and light. _What you mean to ask is if the wardens will leave the heavens be, Not-Quite-Crane. And I think you have already divined the answer. You just do not like it._

This time, Victor is the one who is silent. Yuuri’s heart is lodged in his throat while he watches, and then Victor turns back to him with blue eyes that are brimming with tears. Before Yuuri can quite help himself, he’s reached up to cradle Victor’s face in both hands, which only seems to have the effect of making Victor cry a little more. “Yuuri,” he whispers, the name itself a benediction. “I think I…” He does not need to finish the sentence for Yuuri to understand how it ends. _I have to go._ Instead, Victor sweeps Yuuri into a tight embrace, briefly burying his face into the slope of Yuuri’s shoulder. 

“I know,” Yuuri replies, forlorn. It’s difficult to speak around the growing lump in his throat or the terrible sting in his eyes. “It’s okay,” he says, which is the first lie he’s ever told Victor. He replaces it with a bitter truth instead. “I understand.” Victor kisses his cheek, and then his forehead, and Yuuri clenches his fists so tightly that his nails bite into his palms. Then Victor takes a step back, and studies, again, the darkness at the mouth of the cave. He closes his eyes, and then, on the same shore Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto once danced upon, he begins to move. Yuuri has seen Victor dance before, in their secret, stolen lessons at night, but this is different and more beautiful, like the unfurling of wings or the luminosity of dawn. Though he has the same, preternatural grace as always, there is special poignancy in his steps now, every movement suffused with emotion. Slowly but surely, Yuuri begins to comprehend what it was Victor referred to — the seeing of things not just as they seem, but as they are. 

_…So you do remember, Crane Prince,_ chimes the radiant voice, somehow closer now than ever before. 

“Wait, Victor!” If this is how it’s going to be; if Yuuri has to let him go, he’s not going to do it without giving voice to how he feels. “I love you,” he says. “I think I have loved you from the first time I saw you.”

The crane spirit in front of him bows its red-crowned head, and extends its glorious, elegant wings. _I know._ Then he takes off, and Yuuri is left to watch as Victor begins to ascend upwards, into a gradually lightening sky. Dawn has come again. _I love you, too. I think I always will._

\- - -

The palace is not the same without him. 

Yuuri has no appetite for the music of the koto, and Seung-gil lets him win in three different games of shogi before Yuuri finally admits he’s no longer in the mood to play. He gives half-hearted archery lessons to Kenjirou and throws himself into his work, following his father from one meeting to another with the daimyo. _You loved him,_ his mother noted, when he came back alone and forlorn, heartbroken but successful. _Yes,_ Yuuri said, and he let himself be gathered back into Hiroko’s arms the way he once had been as a boy. _I do._ Even Mari doesn’t tease him. Instead, his sister wants to know what he’ll do now, which is a question Yuuri doesn’t have the answer for.

Three weeks later, Minako-dono comes to bring him tea. “Do you know when your sister was born, every one of her fortunes said that she would be a great ruler? She is tenacious, and strong-willed. And then you came along, so many years later that Hiroko-kōgō was convinced it might not happen at all. When you were born, the star charts I consulted showed me that you would be known even in the heavens. We assumed this meant you would be a noble Prince and a respected Emperor.” 

Yuuri says nothing, except to sip at his tea. He is watching the clouds drift by the window, and wondering if Victor is among them. “...I see now that I may not have had all of the facts,” Minako muses. “Fortunes can be strange in that way.” She pauses for a moment. “Do you wish you had never met him?”

“I could never wish for that.” Yuuri says. By some miracle he manages to keep his voice level. Minako nods. She tells him that there is a mountain, upon which men sometimes stand and make wishes. _If your wish is true enough,_ Minako murmurs, _the kami may see fit to grant it._ They sit together in silence afterwards. When he is finished with his tea, Yuuri looks at her for a long, long time, and then his teacher scowls back at him. 

“If you leave without telling your mother goodbye,” she snaps, “I will never forgive you.”

So he does. He goes to the throne room, in front of his sister, his mother, his father, and he bows so deeply that he nearly brushes the floor. _There is still one more journey I need to make._ In this, Yuuri is accompanied still by Nishigori and Minami, loyal to the bitter end. Atop Mount Fuji on a clear night underneath a silvery moon, the Crown Prince begins to dance. _I love you,_ he thinks, as he twirls and leaps across the mountain top. _Do you see me, Victor?_ He dances the way Victor once danced, with all of the elegance and the majestic beauty of the crane. _I love you,_ Yuuri thinks, and he hears, but only distantly, the surprised murmurs of Takeshi and Kenjirou, which already seem very, very far away. 

_Yuuri? Is that you?_

_Let’s leave together. I’m ready now._

He hears the flapping of wings. 


End file.
